Page 113 of Wayfarers

Knox raises an imaginary glass. “To them,” he says. “The people who made you believe in love.”

Knox A Little Later

“Wait,” Sylvie says. “So—”

“So Cleopatra lived like two thousand years before the moon landing but like twenty-five hundred years after the pyramids were built,” I say.

“Ah, okay, now I get what you were saying. Then she lived significantly closer in time to the moon landing than the building of the pyramids. Is that true?”

“Apparently.”

“Where did you read that?”

“In some big book that you’re supposed to read while you’re on the toilet.”

“Supposed to read?”

“Well, like, it’s intended for that purpose. I shouldn’t say you’re supposed to read it on the toilet. You can read whatever you want; it’s a free country.”

“Did you read it on the toilet?”

“No, I read it in an off-toilet setting.”

“Is that allowed?” Sylvie asks.

“I think that by the same token that you’re not required to read it while on the toilet, you’re also not forbidden from reading it when in an off-toilet setting.”

Sylvie wrinkles her nose. “Don’t say ‘off-toilet setting’ anymore.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, I find that weird factoid more credible coming from a book that’s been, like, edited than if you got it from an email forward from your boomer uncle.”

“I feel very fortunate to have largely skipped the boomer uncle email forward phenomenon.”

“You hungry?”

“I could eat. It’s lunchtime-y.”

“I am. And Winslow is acting squirrelly like he needs to potty. I just saw a sign for a rest area. We’ll pull off there.”

After we park, I take sandwich fixings to a nearby concrete picnic table and start making lunch for Sylvie and me—it’s slow-going with my bad hand—while she hitches up Winslow and takes him on a quick walk. When she returns, her face is pale like she ate something that had spent too much time in a dumpster (I would know) and her energy is flustered and angry.

“Let’s go. I hate this rest stop.”

I set down the plastic knife I’m using to spread mustard. “You okay? You look . . . not.”

“There were these two gross old dudes back there and the one with the bandanna on his head was totally filming me. Like, super obviously, as if ‘yeah? what’re you gonna do about it, little girl?’”

“What? Who?”

Sylvie nods in the direction of a couple of sunburned men in their fifties, leaning on expensive Harleys. Both have beer guts and gray goatees and wear sunglasses and shiny black leather vests. One has a Confederate flag bandanna covering his head. Neither has a neck.

“I’m gonna go talk to them.”

“Knox.”

“Just a conversation.”